Cluster maintenance 2013

Because of our recent mild winters, good budgeting, and a high rate of owners paying the HOA fees, the board has decided that we are financially in a position to do some much needed cluster maintenance. Some of this has already happened – you may have seen tree crews pruning limbs and felling hazardous dead trees.

The other major project will be starting this fall. The board has contracted with Blade Runners to improve our landscaping, most notably the many dead patches of grass around the cluster. BR currently provides our mowing service and has done previous remediation projects for us where they went above and beyond what was required.

Unfortunately, their master gardener does not believe that the grass can be brought back in most of the areas because our trees provide too much coverage even if we were to use a “deep shade” type of grass. So those spots will be mulched and filled with various plantings and ground covers. The other part that excites me, is that all of the mailboxes will now have stone walkways leading to them. No more muddy shoes!

One last note, as you may be aware, we haven’t had to raise the dues in several years. Part of this is because of the volunteer efforts of people in this neighborhood who do things like paint the sign, remove invasive plants from the cluster, or come to the volunteer days we’ve had in the past. If you see something that can be improved and you can do it, great! If it’s something little go ahead and do it, if it’s a little bigger you can email the board about it: board@oakspringway.com. Volunteerism is obviously part of the spirit of Reston and contributes so much to this neighborhood.